the persecutions of Diocletian, left Jerusalem to spread the good tidings in Armenia; St. Nina went with them as far as Vashgarabada, and then pursued her journey alone. As she was entering the city of Mtzkhet, the king of Georgia, Marian, with all his people, went out to a hill in the neighbourhood to offer human sacrifices to idols, but in answer to her prayer a mighty storm arose and destroyed the images. She took up her abode in a cell in the king's garden, and soon became well-known as a healer of the sick. At length the queen fell ill, and St. Nina, having made her whole in the name of Jesus, converted the Georgian court to Christianity, and in 314 A.D. baptized all the people of the city. Over the spot in the royal garden where her cell had been, the king built the Samtavr church, which still exists, and lies to the left of the post-road. It was then revealed to St. Nina that the tunic, the object of her search, lay buried under a cedar in the middle of the town; the tree was cut down and the robe was found in the hands of the dead girl. On the spot where the cedar stood King Marian built, in 328, the Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles; the cedar was replaced by a column, and this column is said to drip myrrh occasionally, even in these degenerate days of ours. The sacred garment was preserved in the cathedral until the seventeenth century, when Shah Abbas sent it as a present to the Tsar of Russia, Mikhail Fedorovich. It was solemnly deposited in the Cathedral of the Assumption at Moscow, where I saw it last autumn. Having evangelized Kartli, St. Nina proceeded to Kakheti, where she met with the same success, and died at Bodbé, near Signakh; her tomb is in a monastery overlooking one of the finest landscapes in all Kakheti. The Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles is the chief place of interest in Mtzkhet. The original church was of wood, but in 378 it was replaced by a stone edifice, which stood until the invasion of Tamerlane. The existing church was built in the fifteenth century. A stone wall, with ruined towers, encloses a rectangular piece of ground, in which stands the cathedral, a fine building about seventy paces long by twenty-five paces broad. It is in the Byzantine style, and the interior is divided into three parts by two rows of columns. Here lie buried the last kings of Georgia and their families, the patriarchs of the church, and other illustrious persons. The post-house at Mtzkhet was a pleasant surprise to me, but I found nearly all the stations on this road equally comfortable; in many of them there are bed-rooms, a dining-room, a ladies' room, and one can get white bread and European food. Those who have travelled on post-roads in Russia will readily understand my surprise.